Mayday

I’ve
said it before, and I’ll say it again. My body is a lot smarter than my brain. That’s not saying much, seeing as the three times I’ve broken bones
have been due to tripping, punching a wall, and tripping again. But those three
hospital visits aside, if I can manage to quiet my mind long enough, my body
goes on a productive kind of autopilot. I just do what needs to be done without
wasting time overthinking every. Single. Little. Thing. I don’t stop working
every few minutes to skip a song on my playlist or look up something I heard on
a podcast. When my mind is quiet, I can just go for a run without debating how
many and which layers I may need for the 60 minutes I'll be outside.I mean, they say a mind is a terrible thing
to waste, but most often all mine does is waste a lot of time.

A
weekend away is always a good time for an extended brain reboot, especially
when you’re flipping the off button with one hand while balancing your phone
with a frozen Irish coffee in the other. It was my first trip to New Orleans,
and I was there with a friend who made sure we maintained a steady stream of
tequila through our systems for two and a half fun filled days. We biked all
over the city, shopped the entirety of Magazine Street with to-go drinks (for Chicagoans,
carrying an alcoholic beverage around is a novelty), and ate approximately
8,000 perfectly seasoned shrimp. It was so hot and muggy I sweat through
my clothes, which a stranger felt the need to point out to me. “Ma’am, you’ve
got a wet spot on the back of your dress.” She clearly did not live in a place
that snowed in May. “I know!” I exclaimed. “Isn’t it great? I’m sweating!”
While I had a ball exploring such a wonderful city with one of my
favorite humans, I felt a little…off. Normally in a no-holds-barred bar
situation, I am the first to get rowdy and loud. This is because I am a
lightweight, but still. I love the devil who resides on my
left shoulder (her name is Drusilla after the crazy vampiress in Buffy) and
handing her the reigns usually ends up in a good time for all. I mean, who
doesn’t enjoy an impromptu illegal firework show in Chicago’s stuffy Gold Coast
neighborhood, or breaking into the ice rink at Wrigley Field, or stealing traffic cones to create humorous detours? (Oh, Dru.) But no matter how many times I went around the
Carousel Bar chugging whiskey milks, she wouldn’t come out, and as a result I
may be the first human being to not throw up in a gutter during their inaugural
trip to New Orleans.

When I
got back to Chicago the first thing I did was go for a run, because it’s common
knowledge that 40 minutes of moderate exercise can fully erase an entire
weekend of cocktails called “Little Red Corvette” and 1am beignets. As I
approached Lake Michigan, my gut wretched. I
shouldn’t have mixed tequila and gin, I thought. And then it became hard to
breathe. My airways were blocked as if I had swallowed a baseball. This is what a 30-degree temperature
difference will do, I reasoned. Then I felt them. Tears. I ran off the path toward the water so as few people as possible could see me
burst, and burst I did. With a big heave of air the baseball came up and
emotion poured out. But emotion from what? What was happening? Why this sudden outpour of feelings? In public no less. The only thing I fear more than public
crying is being murdered by a man, because fuck the patriarchy taking me out. But
here I was, doing my best to play up my sobbing as a recovering from an
extremely fast sprint. I collected myself enough to finish my run but spent the
next two days in and out of tears. My chest hurt so bad from trying to stop
sobbing that I walked around my apartment cradling it, as if I were made of
glass. When that familiar swell of panic took over another run, I once again
exited the running path and sat down by the lake. On a hunch, I got out my phone, opened Facebook
messenger, searched my brother’s name, and scrolled up. There it was. Exactly two years ago was the last time I saw him alive. In that message thread, I told
him I’d pick him up around 9 and we’d go out for beers. He said he’d be waiting
outside. The messages jump ahead to the early morning hours when he should have
been sleeping. “Thanks for the sibling brewskies,” he wrote.

It is
hard to know when grief will show up, especially if you have a master’s degree
in Feeling Squashing and are currently working on your doctorate thesis
entitled, Emotional Repression in the Aftermath of Sudden Sibling Death: How
Beer, Running, and Humor Make Everything Fine, Really, it’s Fine, Please,
Please Stop Looking at Me.This is why
my mind is always so busy. To keep the real stuff, the painful stuff, buried
deep under mundane tasks and inconsequential decisions. Two days of turning my
brain off in New Orleans was just enough time to let my body remember what my
mind wanted to forget, that May 9th was the last time I saw my
brother. The last time I heard him laugh. The last time I worried if it would
be the last time I would see him. He didn’t look good that night. His 6’3”
frame was gaunt, his cheeks hollow. We couldn’t go to any of the local bars, as he’d been banned from all of them, so I bought a six pack of beer and we drove
out to an old cemetery in the middle of a cornfield. As the lightest rain came
down, a mist, really, we laid on the hood of my old car and cracked jokes
between sips. I wanted to take a photo, but I knew I only wanted to take it
because I was scared I’d never see him again, so I didn’t. Now all I have of
that evening are the residual feelings of his palpable anxiousness, his restless
energy next to me, and the awkwardness of hugging someone so much taller than
you. My body remembered all of this, and in doing so, crumbled.

I don’t
know if I’ve really grieved yet. It’s been almost two years since he died, but
I’ve managed to keep my mind occupied with other things. My mother’s
well-being, my job, my marriage. I broke my kneecap just before his first
deathaversary last year, so that was a good and excruciating distraction. I
also lost a much-wanted pregnancy, so that ate up a lot of brother grief time,
too. But life has been uneventful lately. No disasters, no losses, just
pleasant time with friends and a man I love more than a chocolate
donut that’s so thoroughly covered in chocolate the hole is filled up. My
mental hurdles are lower and are spaced farther apart. There’s time now to remember,
to feel, to ache, for my body to catch up with my mind and remind me that I
cannot use one to deflect the other. Just as we cannot stop our own eventual
deaths, we also cannot avoid feeling the deaths of others. Not with trips, or
tequila, or to-do lists. Like the villain in a horror movie, our grief is just
behind us, no matter how fast we run.